BY ANIL SWAMY 

 

 

 

In Julius Caesar, Marullus, while interacting with Cobbler asks, ‘But what trade art thou? Answer me directly’. The Cobbler replies ‘A trade sir, that, I hope, I may use with a safe conscience, which is, indeed, sir, a mender of bad soles’. Such creative prose with puns and punctuations, always mesmerised me all along. Shakespeare, might have been the greatest English writer, but aren’t our indigenised Shakespeares, far ahead in creative word twisting, sarcasm, especially ‘Gender Biased’ naming of Events, persons or Items. My scarce brain cells spun monstrously, when recently our relative, an Air Force Officer, spared an evening for us. Brilliant of me I thought, but could only pose the most common question, ‘Which Plane you fly’? ‘None’ he snubbed me. ‘I fly an Aircraft high above the mountain tops’ with a fair hint of sarcasm. ‘And my favorite bird is super sensual Mirage’ he asserted. My rest of the evening was entwined in ‘She’ for a mighty Mirage Bomber, imagining it’s lady like sensual body features. Every language does possess an inbuilt talent and creativity to enable thinking in that language. Our thoughts too, always need a language to stimulate brains and even in deep meditation, Saints also communicate in a language with eternity. Isn’t a train, car, motorbike or bus, a female gender, whereas truck, jeep or hand rickshaw is male.

 

Surprisingly shoes or garments, most prominent attire of human beings, across all ages, are sadly ‘no gender’ entities. Inarguably the most destructive muscle of the world, the powerful ‘Hydrogen Bomb’ is revered as ‘Mother of all Bombs’. Ironically, we address Bapu as father of Nation, Dr Homi Bhabha was father of Atomic Energy establishment, Dr Abdul Kalam the ‘Missile Man’ and Joseph Kurian, father of ‘Milk Revolution’. Wonder why it hasn’t been vice versa? While the Female Head of a State is often titled an Iron Lady for her strong will, ruthless administration and superefficient brains, whereas the ‘Iron man’ title goes, only to body builders or wrestlers with no political achievements and hardly any grey matter. After all male head of states do have brains and are equally strong. If this century is dedicated to Women Empowerment, then hear this. My company’s all too powerful and an autocrat chairman, was infamous for his abusive language, would sulk and forcibly control himself, in presence of a lady director in meetings. His BP would shoot up and he would perspire with a reddened face, when he couldn’t shout filth and abuse hapless juniors in her presence. All those at management levels, would ensure presence of the lady director in most of meetings and discussions, to keep the chairman under check.

 

Later, we often made fun of him, ‘who’s more powerful?’ The chairman or the lady director, whose mere presence was enough to control him. After graduation, I joined as a sales engineer in a cutting tools unit and high pressure hydraulic hose manufacturing company, with pure technical products lines, boasting many technical words which were gender biased, like ‘cleavage’ in drills and taps and ‘male or female’ ends of the hoses and scores of technical components in lubrication system, named on female body parts. My boss, a lady with ‘no nonsense’, rough attitude, once visited a factory, where our ‘centralised lubrication system’ was malfunctioning, she was too embarrassed to talk with the workmen and had to call for our instant help. After that incident, she became more of a friend than a boss as she had realised the importance of having male engineers to interact with workmen. Once, we were fortunate to sail on a Coast Guard frigate. During lunch ship’s captain greeted us and casually informed us to ‘be ready to watch her gallop on high seas’. ‘She’ I wondered aloud, to be told of their respectful manner to address the ship. Soon he commanded ‘her’ to an exhilarating 55 Knots. The Middlesex County Cricket team has always confused me. I wondered, do they have a separate team for such players? Back in India, never ever saw them play anything, and aren’t you confused, if the cow dung is sacred in Indian households and religious rituals but then why Bullsh..t the oxen? Why?